Most people know better than to post anything on the internet with their name attached to it. Anything posted to the internet stays on the internet forever, and most people don’t want their every conversation recorded for everyone to read.

So they use a handle. Something goofy, or something hacker sounding, like z0n3r or sleepingear. It’s not enough.

Finding out someone’s handle is easier than ever. Just find out what their instant messanging handle is. People use the same handle for everything, because they figure it’s anonymous, and because it’s impossible to remember 10 different names, and which you used to sign up where. Thus, all you need to do is find out your target’s email address or instant messanger address, and you can pinpoint their every conversation to their name. Just try a Google search for their handle.

That’s scary.

Especially with the MySpace Generation. Kids who are under 14 years old are posting their every detail out to the entire world for anyone to read. I doubt they realise information never disapears from the internet, nor do they realise the possible consequences of teachers knowing who they hang out with and what they’re talking about away from school. Or, later down the road, employers.

Everyone needs to create multiple aliases if they plan on using the internet. I personally keep an encrypted file on a USB key with all of my aliases and my passwords to multiple forums. Whenever I need to log on to some forum I posted to years ago, all I need to do is open up my file and do a search for the web address. There’s my username and password.

This is much more difficult to track. You’re adding another layer of difficulty in tracking your every conversation on the internet. And that, my friends, is a Good Thing.

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There’s the Navy for the seas, the Army for land, Air Forces for the skies, and the CIA for Intelligence.

But what about the technology that runs our society? Where is its defense?

As computer hackers and identity thieves launder millions, the threat to our nation gets larger. Imagine an enemy country funding thousands of computer hackers to steal American Identities off the net. These could be stored until a time of war, when they could be used to launder and steal millions (or possibly even billions) when the time is right. The US Department of Defense has been really quite lax in protecting our nation from the next generation of possible attacks. And this is just one example.

Previous wars have shown, whenever a superpower is fought against, it’s done using non-conventional military actions. It doesn’t get any more nonconventional than identity theft. Or how about distributed denial of service attacks to the main US corporations online. Imagine the major American Internet companies all being attacked at once. A very easy way to do millions of dollars in damage to the US economy.

But can the US be trusted to create an effective electronic military? One capable of truly defending our technological society?

This will become a major question mark, as time goes on, and our society gets more complex. Sure, it’s easy to defend technology that’s 10 years old, but what about defending technology that’s under a year old? Is it even worth the effort? Or is this one of the biggest problems with such a complex society?

Will our complexity and innovation make us impossible to defend? What do you think? And would you trust the Department of Defense to defend the technological infrastructure that keeps or society functioning? Or would you rather rely on private companies to handle the complexities?

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